Virtual Manufacturing Background Project

Survey Response

• Name(s): Austin Tate
• Contact Information:

  Prof. Austin Tate, Technical Director
  Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute
  University of Edinburgh, 80 South Bridge, Edinburgh EH1 1HN, UK
  E-mail: A.Tate@ed.ac.uk  Tel: +44(0)131 650 2732  Fax: +44(0)131 650 6513
  

• Information related to Virtual Manufacturing

  The Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute at the University of
  Edinburgh is a non-profit technology institute within the University
  which works with industry and government agencies worldwide in the
  followings principal areas:
  
     - Process Management
     - Information Management
  
  AIAI has a permanent staff of approximately 25 people organised into
  three technical groups:
  
     - Knowledge-Based Planning and Scheduling
     - Knowledge-Based Decision Suport
     - Knowledge Engineering Methods
  
  We work with organisations such as the USAF Rome Laboratory, ARPA, US
  oil majors, Japanese IT companies such as Hitachi and Toshiba, European
  organisations and companies such as the European Space Agency and
  British Telecom, and multi-nationals such as IBM, Unilever, etc.  Our
  work is a mixture of joint projects, and technology transfer via
  training, awareness programs, and publications.
  
  We are working in the areas of manufacturing, and enterprise
  integration technologies which are relevant to virtual and agile
  manufacturing.
  
  Further details of our work can be found via our WWW Home Page
    http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/ especially in the projects section.  The
  most relevant projects may be: Enterprise, O-Plan and TOSCA,
  
  Contributors technologies from AIAI cross-related to your interest areas
  are:
  
  1.  VISUALIZATION:
      TechWorld and PlanWorld Viewers
  
  2.  ENVIRONMENT CONSTRUCTION TECHNOLOGIES:
      AIAI`s systems integration architecture as seen in O-Plan, Enterprise, etc.
  
  3.  MODELING TECHNOLOGIES:
      Enterprise and activity ontology work, task modelling, etc.
  
  4.  REPRESENTATION:
      ditto
  
  5.  META-MODELING:
      AUSDA/ASPEN, Enterprise tool descriptions, Enterprise task models.
  
  6.  INTEGRATING INFRASTRUCTURE & ARCHITECTURE:
      AIAI's Systems Integration Architecture and standards components
      descriptions as in O-Plan, Enterprise, etc.
  
  7.  SIMULATION: 
  
  8.  METHODOLOGY:
      Use of CommonKADS, TOPKAT Tool, Appoach in Enterprise and O-Plan.
  
  9.  INTEGRATION OF LEGACY DATA:
      In Enterprise.
  
  10.  MANUFACTURING CHARACTERIZATION:
       TOSCA - Hitachi problem characterisation, TOSCA Manufacturing Domain
       Description Language.
  
  11.  VERIFICATION, VALIDATION & MEASUREMENT
       none.
  
  12.  WORKFLOW:
       O-Plan (and perhaps Enterprise) are based on an intelligent workflow model
       as the main driver of the system.  WE are members of the International
       Workflow Management Coalition and are inputting our activity ontology work
       to this and other international initiatives.
  
  13.  CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TRADES:
       Three level (STrategic, Tactical, Operational agent mdoel in O-Plan
       and TOSCA).
  

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